SHEQContractor sold for €1 750

The SHEQ Document Management Service SHEQContractor has been sold for R25 280 by an independent publisher based in Dublin, Ireland, at a private meeting held during the A-OSH Expo in Midrand last week.

The Domain sheqcontractor.co.za was the primary reason for the purchase but a condition of the purchase included the sub-contracting of the DMS service to private individuals in SA under a license agreement.

The new owner will take over the domain name in the coming week, but the takeover has already started by the shutting down of the SABizonline Auction portal. SHEQContractor will take on the form of an online magazine for the Construction Industry and focus on issues related to Construction SHEQ Management.

Africa Media purchased a 50% stake in Sheqafrica.com earlier this year from the Cygma Group as part of the latter’s divestment in the SHEQ industry who sold its entire IT division over the past 8 months. Rudy Maritz, CEO of Cygma said that “there comes a time when everything reaches a ceiling and for us, running an entire IT unit for the sake of a single industry was not a profitable business decision. With the release of SHEQContractor, we recovered our losses and got out.”

SHEQContractor will continue to offer the DMS Service to its current licensees and will continue to update the platform, especially in view of the GDPR of the EU recently published. The ToolBoxTalk app will also remain unaffected.

A representative of the Irish publisher, Johan du Preez, a professional engineer in Dublin and former South African, told Sheqafrica.com that the Construction Sector have generally been serviced by a number of publications, all punting for the support of a specific regime within SHEQ Management. “We will not follow suit. SHEQContractor will be a neutral publication offering views and information from both sides of the coin, and will primarily focus on small contractors and what they need to know in order to comply with the Construction Regulations, the JBCC contract and the requirements of the CIDB. We intend to bring international best practice to the SA Construction Industry.” Du Preez said.

SHEQContractor will release its first edition on 4 June 2018. Du Preez continued that SHEQContractor will share information from Sheqafrica.com as well as SheqForum.com, the USA edition of Sheqafrica.com, bringing a new dimension to news and reviews within the Construction Sector.

On the question of the value of the deal, Du Preez said in jest “It was an easy decision when we converted your monopoly coins to Euro. The domain name alone was worth it. We will take the next steps to make it a profitable publication.”

Du Preez and his team plans to make inroads in Southern Africa, and have already started plans to launch a professional body for Safety Engineering in Africa, but more about this in the future.

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Originally founded by Ben Fouche of Real Babe Media, Sheqafrica.com has been serving the SHEQ industry since 2007 and contains over 1600 articles from various experts in the Safety, Health and Environmental Management fields. Today, Sheqafrica.com is proudly co-owned by the Africa Media Group(50%) and focuses on Human Resources Management, Risk & Compliance on the African Continent.The role of the HR and IR practitioner remains undisputed in the selection and placement of competent staff, while the education and training of people goes a long way in achieving business objective.